Starfield is not just going to be a major test of Xbox’s new acquisition model, and one of its biggest games of this generation. It’s also a test for the entire concept of Xbox Game Pass itself, and whether this idea of putting massive games as day one launches on the service is going to be worth it relative to their cost, or forgone sales of $70 copies.
While these appear to be mostly guesses, there is an idea that Starfield will generate somewhere between 3-5 million Game Pass subs by itself. 5 million subs would be 20% of all Xbox Game Pass subs to date, as the last reported figure was 25 million in January of 2022.
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Recent data from Microsoft itself at least strongly implies what sales of the past two generations have been. Combined users from the Xbox One generation and the Xbox Series X/S generation are 79 million, with Xbox Series X/S being 21 million.
While having 25 million subscriptions out of 79 million potential sales across two generations means there’s some room to grow, you have to consider that there’s a lot of overlap between someone with say, the same Game Pass sub moving between generations. Or Xbox One-era people who have switched to PS5 or just have not bothered to upgrade at all.
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It does feel like Xbox is running into this problem of an upward ceiling on Game Pass subscriptions without acquiring a dramatically expanded userbase. The most dedicated Xbox players already have Game Pass so Starfield launching there is just a perk, not some new source of revenue from Microsoft. Microsoft used to be bragging about new Game Pass records all the time, but it is quite odd that they have not shared any numbers outside of revenue (which is solid!) since January of 2022, as you’d think they would have announced 30 million. But maybe they’re waiting until 40, 50?
If this plays out as some are predicting with that many new Xbox Game Pass subs, that could be a windfall for Microsoft, certainly. Who needs a $70 game sale when you’ve now convinced someone to sign up for a service that costs $10-17 a month or $120 to $204 a year?
Of course you run a risk in the opposite direction as well. With a $1 promotional deal, new subscribers could sign up, play Starfield for a month and ditch Game Pass. Worst case, two months for $11-18. Or, of course, there is no mandate to buy Game Pass at all. You can just buy the game for $70, albeit very few people do that for day-one Game Pass games in general.
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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim has sold 60 million copies. Not to say Starfield will reach that mark, but it does feel like it needs to generate a hell of a lot of Game Pass subscriptions to warrant A) its day-one launch status there and B) keeping it off PlayStation where tens of millions of sales would have happened over time. We’ll see how it goes soon enough.
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